NEW FLAG TO FLY – The town manager has accepted a recommendation that a “Real Pirates” museum take over the historic Hyannis Armory.

Town to “pirates”: Armory may be boarded

Based on the recommendation of a citizen review panel, Town Manager Tom Lynch has accepted a proposal to reuse the Hyannis Armory as the lair of a “Real Pirates” exhibition.

In an interview, Lynch indicated that the committee had sensed a “passionate commitment” from local developer Chad Doe to provide something visitors would enjoy and residents would be proud to have in their town. He cited Doe’s visits to several sites where undersea explorer Barry Clifford has displayed artifacts from the pirate ship Whydah in an exhibition sponsored by National Geographic.

The committee was pleased, Lynch said, with the intent to have “up to date and ever-changing exhibits from the Whydah along with other recent findings. It would be fresh and hands on, and family- and child-friendly.”

At the outset, Lynch said, he made it clear to the review panel that “while this was the only viable application, that didn’t mean we had to accept it. It had to be advantageous to the town.

“[Members] did their due diligence and asked tough questions. The applicant responded in kind with very open and frank commitments to a wide variety of issues.”

Some of those discussions touched on parking. In their original proposal, Doe and his partner Robert Carlton, and Clifford, suggested that “private employees in the Hyannis Main Street Business Improvement District and public employees using the School Administration Building and Town Hall be encouraged if not required to park in the RTA(Hyannis Transportation Center) lots unless a vehicle is necessary in the performance of employees’ job functions. This proposal would not only provide parking for the Armory site but also for Main Street.”

Saying that a shuttle could be run between the transportation center anddowntown, the original proposal stated that, “presently… employees take most of the prime parking spaces in the area, 8 hours a day.”

It appears that didn’t go over very well with the review committee or with Lynch.

“No,” the town manager replied when asked if town parking arrangements nearby would be changed. Then he added, “That’s not to say we are not looking at the Ocean Street lot,” a town property behind the village green bandstand. “We’ve got the money to redo it.”

There has been discussion, Lynch said, “about trying to expand the Armory lot to provide a potential of 60 spaces over there, and working with other downtown spots about shuttle service.”

There was “quite a bit of talk,” he said, “about capital improvements for the building as well as an increase in jobs. There was a strong commitment to maintain an ongoing display of the Kennedy legacy, and [there would be] no changes to the exterior.”

The morning after the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy first addressed the nation as president-elect from the Armory.

Lynch will now put together a smaller committee of negotiators and work up a lease. He will “take that to the town council, and make sure they have a chance to hear from the applicant and to be comfortable that they are issuing a lease. The term will probably be somewhere in the 30-year range.”